"It was a proposal that essentially came out of a brainstorming session as the best analogy," Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable, a Defense Department spokesman, told AFP. "The proposal was dismissed out of hand."

The comment followed the release of a 1994 document produced by the laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio and obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Sunshine Project, an advocacy group.

The paper titled "Harassing, Annoying, and 'Bad Guy' Identifying Chemicals" suggested developing "chemicals that affect human behavior so that discipline and morale in enemy units is adversely affected."

"One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior," the proposal pointed out.

The laboratory also suggested spraying enemy positions with chemicals that would attract biting bugs, bees, rodents and larger animals.

However, the Sunshine Project took exception to Pentagon claims the plan had never gotten off the ground, saying it was under consideration as recently as in 2000 and 2001.

"These statements are untrue," the group said of the Pentagon denial. "The proposal was not rejected out of hand. It has received further consideration."

It said the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate of the Defense Department prepared in 2000 a promotional CD-ROM that sought to spur further development of "non-lethal" weapons and was distributed to other US military and government agencies.

The CD-ROM contained ideas from the "Harassing, Annoying, and 'Bad Guy' Identifying Chemicals" document, according to the project.

A year after that, the directorate commissioned a study of "non-lethal" weapons by the National Academies of Science and included the document among papers submitted for consideration, the group said.

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